Photograph
by ugahill
Summary: Seems like just another rainy day in a nowhere town...but when the Winchester brothers find an old box of memories, they get an unexpected glimpse into their own lives.


Photograph

The rain came down in hard, drizzling sheets, pounding against the pavement and the old, weathered roof of the convenience store.

Dean Winchester glanced up past the tin overhang, staring at the blackened sky and cursing himself—again_—_for allowing Sam take the Impala on a 'quick trip into town.' He'd already been soaked through twice this afternoon.

The run-down motel they were staying at was five hundred feet ahead of him, just across the ancient highway that led out of the town and onto the flat, open plains of rural Nebraska.

Five hundred feet—and, by his guess, approximately forty gallons of rain—away. He pulled his jacket closer to his neck, keeping the collar as far upturned as it would go, and waited a few minutes, hoping for a break in the seemingly endless downpour.

A small, 1970's style radio blared a _Kansas_ song out of the store's open door; he listened to it for a moment—until it was interrupted by another five minute weather report:

_"Storms have shut down a portion of the Interstate due to heavy and violent activity. Motorists are asked to exercise caution in proceeding out of the area. Please stay tuned for updates every five minutes…"_

"Great." Dean tapped his foot on the small porch, leery of standing too long in front of the store, where a few 'wanted' posters were hanging near the doorway. Feds, local police, a few demon spirits, and now violent storms all seemed hell bent on keeping them trapped in this nowhere town.

He squared his shoulders, stuffed the thin paper grocery bag in his jacket, and dashed through the storm. He had to stop as an old truck trundled down the highway, heading west towards the horizon. Lighting lit up the edges of the far sky, the brilliance obscured only by the thick, unending rain.

Thunder crashed overhead as he dodged into the motel parking lot, fumbling in his jacket for the door keys. Sam was back; the Impala was sitting parked in a far corner, out of sight of the highway. At least Sammy was thinking, whatever errand he'd gone to run.

He took the keys out, soaked completely through, and jammed them into the slightly rusted lock. The deadbolt clicked back creakily.

Dean darted into the room, shutting the door against the blinding rain, and whirled around, raising a hand to wipe the wet from his short hair.

And stopped cold.

"What in the _hell_…"

Everywhere he looked, in every direction and on every open surface, papers were scattered. Papers, pages from books, drawings, charts, old sketches and even a few diagrams here and there. Every place he turned, there was some piece of paper covering it up. There was no place to move that wouldn't get mud onto something. He was already dripping onto a series of pages that looked like they'd been torn from a seventh grade algebra textbook.

The irritation he'd felt over the unending rain and highway problems was steadily building. He dropped the grocery bag straight down to the floor. "SAM!"

His brother's dark, shaggy head popped up from beside the second of the twin beds they'd requested, a stupid grin on his face.

"Dude…look at this photograph."

"Photograph? What the hell is going on here? What's all this mess?"

Sam looked over the room for a second, his forehead creasing. "Oh, you mean the papers?"

"No, I want to know why you didn't hang your jacket up. Of course I mean the papers! What are you doing? What is all this?"

"History," said Sam, rising from the floor. "It's our history."

"History? Sam, we don't have 'history'."

"Yeah, we do…or actually, we did." He moved to a box in the far corner of the room. "You remember that page in Dad's diary that had a number and combination on it? The name of the town was 'Preserve'."

He flinched a little at the casual way Sam said 'Dad'. "So what?"

Sam straightened a little, his voice taking on the snotty, 'Stanford educated' sound Dean hated. "The name of _this _town is 'Preserve'. Preserve, Nebraska."

"And that's significant…why?"

"Because if Dad wrote out a combination in relation to this town, don't you think it would be important?"

"Maybe. But we never figured out what the combination was for. It could be anything."

"Sure. Except the town is called 'preserve'—you know, to save things for later."

"I know what the word means."

"Well," Sam shook his head, his smile wide. "If you're going to preserve something in a town called 'Preserve', wouldn't you put it somewhere it could be kept safe?"

"_Please_ tell me you did not go wandering into a local bank."

"Of course not. Dad wouldn't have put something in a bank. Plus you'd need a key for that. This is a combination, like for a combination lock."

Dean shivered for a moment, suddenly realizing he was still wet—and getting cold. He took off his jacket and hung it on the door handle, where it wouldn't disturb the mess. "Get to the point, Sam."

"I found the locker at a bus stop. And I found this," he tossed the box across to Dean, "inside."

Dean surveyed the box—a standard cardboard legal box, with spaces on the front for writing names. The front of this box had only one name—Winchester. "What is this?"

"It's a memory box, I guess."

"A what?" Dean glanced around, taking in the papers again. Looking more closely, he could see they were old school papers, drawings kids would make, and a ton of photographs, featuring a pair of rather scrawny boys.

Very _familiar_ boys.

"Oh my God," he murmured, bending down to pick up a picture that caught his eye. It was a barely recognizable sketch of a couple of soldiers storming a hill. "I remember this. I drew it. When I was…six, seven maybe?"

Sam's face was alight. "Yeah. It's ours, Dean. All of it. Everything in that box—it's all stuff Dad saved. Our schoolwork, our pictures, and all these photographs. I never would have thought—but he kept it all. And he left it here for us to find."

"You've gotta be…" Dean moved across the room, taking in all the paper, seeing some things he recognized, some things he didn't. He placed a hand on a math worksheet, graded "B", with the name 'Dean Winchester' scrawled sloppily at the top. "He saved math tests?"

"Math tests—my old charts and graphs from algebra—our papers from English class. Stuff we wrote. Look," he swiped a piece of paper from the bed, holding out a poem. "I did that in second grade."

Dean surveyed the neatly written verses. "Yeah, that sure sounds like your sappy self." He wasn't as cold anymore. "What about the pictures?"

Sam's grin grew wider. "Unbelievable. Most of it's pictures of stuff we did while we were on the road, but a couple have us when we were really little."

"How long? I mean…"

"Up through high school, I think. I mean, here's this—" he handed a stack of color photographs over. Dean cracked a smile. They were taken when he was about 15 or 16—skinny and tall. He'd worn his hair long then, and was wearing a Metallica t-shirt and faded jeans. Sam stood next to him, a skinny arm around his brother's neck, sporting a polo, khaki shorts and sandals. He was nearly as tall as Dean, though he wasn't even a teenager, and his hair was almost the same as it was today, long and floppy.

The next in the stack had them goofing around. The rest were all of them in the same place, surveying the town.

"What the hell happened to your hair, dude?" Sam asked, laughing. "Were you going for the surfer look?"

"Hey, that was the style then. And I don't exactly see your outfit winning any awards."

"At least I didn't look like I was going to a thrasher concert."

"Thrash metal was cool," Dean returned absentmindedly, bending around to look at more of the paperwork. His eyes landed on a stack of yellowed pages bound with blue ribbon. "Damn!" He grinned widely, flipping open the makeshift book. "I can't believe he kept this!"

"What is it?"

"It's my…it's a…" he glanced up at his brother, and handed over the book. "Well, look."

Sam flipped it open, his grin fading a little. "It's a demon dictionary."

"Yeah, well..." Dean snatched it back.

"He made you draw this? What was it, a lesson?"

"No!" Dean colored a little. "I wanted to do something—something to impress Dad. He was so serious all the time. I wanted to prove I was able to do something to help him."

"So you drew him a dictionary of demonology?"

"Hey, he liked it." Dean flipped open the little book. "Look, it's Beelzebub." He pointed at the little red figure with a forked tail, roaring fire and chasing humans with pitchforks. "Damn, I was good."

Sam shook his head. "You were something."

"What else is there?"

"Tons…you name it, he probably saved it." He grabbed a stack of workbooks from the bed. "There are mine."

Dean frowned at the perfect "A's" drawn across the top. "Figures."

"Well, look at this." Sam tossed him a set of essays, typed, written by one Dean Winchester. These had a red 'A plus' mark. "Wow. I'd forgotten about these."

"I didn't know you were so prosaic."

"You didn't know I was what?"

"How did you score that, if you don't know what prosaic means?" Sam asked after laughing a moment. "Did the teacher like you?"

Dean thought back for a moment. "No…this chick was in Missouri, I think. She was old. I don't know how I got the A…maybe the topic?" He turned to the title page. "'Folklore and mythology of rural Missouri.' That probably explains it."

Sam raised an eyebrow. "Maybe."

"I didn't flirt with my teachers, Sam," he said harshly. Then grinned. "Well, not most of them. There was a really cute English teacher in Montana."

"Whatever." Sam walked around the bed and picked up another photo, this one black and white. "Look at this one."

Dean took it from his hand, careful to keep his fingertips on the edges. This photograph was similar to the first set he'd seen, only they were much younger. Dean was leaning up against the Impala, arms crossed, looking bored. He was wearing tie-dye and had his hair in a sort of mullet.

Sam had his little arms wrapped around a robot, looking tired and a little intimidated. They were in a field, with knee high prairie grass.

"Is that a Transformer?" Dean asked.

"Yeah…Optimus Prime." Sam bent down beside the bed and pulled up a slightly faded red and blue robot. "It was _the_ transformer."

Dean laughed, taking the robot and turning it upside down. "I can't believe this."

"Yeah, well what about this?" He swiped the one he'd initially shown him when Dean walked through the door. Dean bent down to peer at it.

"What the hell is on your head?" he laughed.

This time they were on a sandy shore, a beach, maybe, or a riverbank. Dean was lying on his stomach, around five or six years old, his face cupped in his hands, freckles bright as he smiled at the camera. Sam was sitting on Dean's back, making a strongman pose, swimmies on his biceps, and something fuzzy attached to his head.

"I don't know," Sam laughed. "I have no idea. I don't even remember taking this picture."

"You wouldn't. You'dve been two, maybe three, when this was taken." He cupped the photo gently. "We went to a lake somewhere in the south. You wanted to swim, but you didn't know how. So Dad bought you some of those floaty-things and went spent the entire afternoon watching you splash around in the lake. I don't remember what you had on your head, though."

Sam's smile faded. "It's hard to imagine that we actually did stuff like normal kids."

"We did a lot of things like normal kids, Sammy," Dean said seriously. "A _lot _of things."

"Well, I don't remember feeling normal. Moving from town to town, never staying in the same place for more than six months—leaving all our friends, switching schools—that's not normal."

"Neither is getting attacked by a yellow-eyed demon that burns people on the ceiling. Dad had to do the best he could."

Sam stared at him for a moment, then sighed. Thunder rolled in the background. "Well, at least Dad saved all this. I haven't even gone through half of it."

Dean swallowed, relieved Sam hadn't picked the fight. "Yeah. I never knew he was such a packrat." His eyes fell on a set of pictures on top of the TV. "Oh my God!" He picked them up, thumbing through the set.

Sam came over behind him, staring over his shoulder. "Who's that?"

"You remember her—Kimmie? Kimmie…uh, uh, jeez, what was her last name? She lived in the apartment next door to us in Pennsylvania." A skinny, blond girl with large blue eyes waved at the camera, sitting on a swing set next to Dean. "She loved video games." A smile grew on his face. "She was the first girl I kissed."

Sam squinted at the photo. "Kissed? You couldn't have been more than ten or eleven in that picture."

"Yeah."

"God. You started early."

"Well, tried to. I leaned over to kiss her on the swings, but I got nervous and nearly fell over. She caught me…and then kissed me instead." He grinned widely. "She was awesome."

Sam stared closer at the picture, raising an eyebrow at the girl's wild, hair-sprayed bangs and blue eye shadow. "Uh, at that time, wouldn't it have been 'radical'?"

"Shut up." He put the stack back on the television. "I wonder what she's doing now?"

"Probably married with 2.5 kids."

"Yeah."

"Here's one…you remember this place?"

Dean stared at the picture. Sam was standing alone, grinning a large, toothless grin. He was holding up some kind of stuffed animal. "No…where was this?"

"That old penny arcade. In Illinois. I won that in a crane game."

"You won what…what is that thing?"

"You can't tell? It's a rabbit."

"_That's_ a rabbit?"

"Yeah. I nicknamed him Thumper. I lost him somewhere on the road between Nebraska and wherever we went next—Minnesota, I think."

"Thumper…you mean that ratty old grey and white thing you used to carry around?"

"It wasn't a thing, it was a rabbit!"

"Whatever. That thing was nasty. You used to drool on it at night."

Sam pouted for a minute. "I loved that rabbit."

"I know. It smelled like it, too."

His brother glanced down at the picture fondly. "You know, I read somewhere that that arcade burned down a few years later? Some hoodlum kids. Destroyed nearly half the park it was in, too."

"That…sucks."

"Yeah."

Dean surveyed the room for a moment, then sat, cross-legged, on the floor, and grabbed the nearest stack of papers. "Might as well help you out."

Sam nodded. "Yeah. This might take a while."

"Doesn't matter. Weather report says we're not going anywhere, anyway." Lightning flashed outside the windows. He glanced down at the paper he held in his hand, a picture of a woman with blonde hair. His hands traced over the drawing softly, down to the small 'DW' initialed in the corner. "And you never know what all we might find."

* * *

Sam stretched, rubbing his eyes. He cheeks felt a little sore from grinning so much. Every time he'd come across a photograph of he or Dean, he'd passed it to his brother, and they'd spent the majority of their time laughing over the old memories, so long ago, and yet still vibrant to one or the other.

He'd seen things he'd completely forgotten about—his Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle obsession, for example—and things he'd never known about, like as Dean's flannel security blanket. His brother had had to be prodded about that one.

They even had a few photographs of their father, usually not smiling, standing over one or the other of them. In one picture John was standing with Dean, his hand on Dean's head, both of them holding shotguns. Sam had found it first, shaking his head at how insensitive their father had been at their youth.

Dean, on the other hand, had been absolutely delighted with the picture. "It was my first gun," he remarked, staring down at the photograph with a sad expression. "Dad and I went shooting for the first time that day."

"Shooting?"

"Skeet shooting, Sam. Not hunting."

They'd also gone through a ton of papers, including watercolors they'd drawn, schoolwork—even some old spelling quizzes of Sam's—and a few toys their father must have felt attached to.

All in all, it painted a picture of their Dad Sam hadn't considered—a father who had been very protective—very loving—of his children. A man who, like all other fathers, wanted to keep his children's accomplishments and memories, and store them away so he could some day look at them again, or so they could find them, and cherish them.

He swallowed, remembering his father's face in the hospital.

_All the things I ever said to him…I never knew about this. I just thought—blindly thought—he never cared about it. That he only thought about the mission._

Now, with their photos, albums and memories spread around him on the floor, he realized how much of their father he'd never really known.

And how much he'd taken for granted.

_But Dean knew._

He glanced over to where Dean was sitting, hunched over in his t-shirt and jeans, reading some letters he'd dug up. These memories of the past, for him, were the same as his memories of Dad—good memories, things to be treasured.

For a moment he envied his brother. That feeling of nostalgia—it was the reason their Dad had been able to trust him with things, able to believe in him completely as a son and partner.

_Why he gave up his life for him._

Dean was the son their father had needed. Sam was the one who fought against everything he'd tried to do.

"Dude, look at this!" Dean said with a grin, which faded as he caught sight of Sam's face. "What's wrong?"

Sam blinked. His vision was blurry. "Nothing. Dust."

Dean threw him a questioning look, then shrugged. "Look."

Sam grabbed the papers, sniffing. His breath caught.

'_Why I love my Dad' by Sammy Winchester._

"Oh my God," he whispered, opening a slightly faded, thread bound book of thin pages—the kind used for training in handwriting—and found page after page of kindergarten-aged drawings. Crayons sketches of two stick figures—a large one with black hair and a beard, and a smaller one with a mop of brown hair. At the top were written things like 'he takes me places' and 'he reads me stories at night'.

On the back page were three figures, two like the ones he'd drawn throughout, and one in the middle, linking them together with spindly stick arms. A figure with bright blond hair, wearing a black t-shirt.

Above the figure was an arrow, with the words "my big brother" scrawled messily across the top.

"You didn't always hate him, Sam," said Dean quietly.

Sam sniffed again, closing the book. "I never hated him." He rose, laying the book back inside the box it had come in. He slowly started gathering some of the papers from the floor. "I just didn't understand him."

"You weren't the only one—he didn't get much of you, either," said Dean, raising an eyebrow as Sam grabbed another bunch of their schoolwork. "What are you doing?"

"I'm putting this stuff back. We've been through most of it."

"You…we can't just stick this stuff back in that box."

"What are we going to do with it? Shove it in the trunk of the Impala? Hope it doesn't get crushed when we're throwing our guns back there for a quick getaway? There's no place for it now."

"This is our history, Sam! This is stuff Dad took a lot of time and effort to protect."

"Exactly. Which is why it needs to go back where we found it."

"In that bus station locker? How's it going to be safe there?"

"And where else could we put it?"

"I don't know," Dean said as he stood up, a frantic edge to his voice. "We could…give it to Bobby, or Ellen, or something."

"Right. I'm sure Ellen would love to be put in charge of Dad's stuff. And the next time some demon decides to crack Bobby's ceiling in half we've just got to hope the box isn't somewhere in the way."

Dean faced him uncertainly, raising then lowering his arms, trying to find something to say. Sam turned around and started putting some of the toys and photographs in the box.

His brother frowned, and reached a hand over the box top. "What's this really about, Sammy?"

"Nothing," Sam dodged his outstretched fingers, sliding more photographs inside. "We've got to get moving anyway. The rain's stopped."

Dean watched him for a moment, then slowly pulled away his hand. "You know, you can't just put all this away and pretend we didn't have it, Sam."

Sam paused, looking over at him. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means that you can't pretend you haven't seen this side of Dad. The side that cared."

"I never thought Dad didn't care," he replied sharply. "I _know_ Dad cared. But he didn't think. He didn't think about us. About what all this _meant_ to us."

"Of course he knew what it meant! He always knew what it meant!"

"Oh yeah? When? When did he ever figure out what it was like to be a normal family?"

Dean paused for a minute, then pulled a picture from between the pages of the papers he'd been looking at, holding it out in front of him. "Look at this photograph." Sam turned his head, but his brother moved over to him, shoving the picture in his face. "Look at it, Sam."

Sam frowned, leaning back to scan the picture.

It was of their family.

Their entire family.

Dad, Mom, Dean, and Sam, as an infant, in front of their house in Lawrence. Mary Winchester was smiling, cradling Sam to her, an arm around Dean's neck. John, behind Dean, has an arm around his wife's shoulders, and the other on Dean's head. He was laughing.

He looked young. And happy.

Dean's eyes glittered as Sam took the photo from him, cupping it carefully in his hands. "That's when. That was about a week before she died. Dad had just bought that camera."

Sam flipped the picture over. It was dated October 26th.

"I remember that day. I was little, but I remember that day. I remember it because Dad bought the camera at the same store I got my Halloween costume. And he let me help set up the camera on the tripod. Mom asked me to hold you while she fixed her hair.

"I miss that, Sam. I miss those people in that picture. Her smile—it's burned in my mind. You can't erase memories like that. And as hokey as it might sound, there is a part of me that wishes that nothing had happened two days after we took that picture, and that we were some damn ordinary family with nothing more to worry about than who was going to walk the dog at night."

"Dean…"

"But the fire did happen. It happened, Sam. It sucked, and everything changed for us, but it happened. And all this crap that came because that bastard attacked us that night—went after you that night—that _is_ what's real. That's our life. Yours, mine—and Dad's, too. That," he gestured to their mother, beautiful and happy, "that is the memory of the past that he had to live with every day of his life. Can you blame him for doing what he did?"

Sam swallowed. "No. But God knows, Dean, I understand what that was like. Losing someone the way he lost her. I _know _what he was feeling, every time he thought of that smile.

"But he had kids, Dean. He had two boys that she left behind, two kids he had to take care of—protect. And he risked their lives—he made us go through all of this—for what—revenge?"

"Not for revenge. He was protecting us, Sam. Don't you realize that? What do you think he had us running from?"

Sam stared at him for a moment, memories of the past few months flooding through him. The scene by the river, at the bridge. Their father's last words to Dean.

"Even if we could go back and relive all of this," Dean said, gesturing to the scattered papers. "There is one thing that would not change. That we had to run. Even if Dad had tried to keep us locked away in Normalville, going to the same schools and all that other suburban crap, it wouldn't have changed what he found out."

Sam swallowed. "What he found out about me, right? Isn't that what you're trying to say?"

Dean turned, running a hand through his short hair. "No. I don't know, Sammy. I don't know what Dad knew, or for how long. But I think, whether he knew exactly what was going on or not, he knew that running, chasing—hunting—it was the only way that he could keep us safe, and let us have all this, too." He looked back at him. "We had good memories. Despite everything, we had good memories. He gave us that the best way he knew how."

"Then why didn't he ever tell us that?"

"I think he tried."

Sam snorted. "Right. Like telling me I was stupid for wanting to go to college."

"No, Sam. By letting you go at all."

Sam stood with his hand on the box, the old photograph loosely between two fingers. "Letting me go."

"He gave you a chance at normal. He knew you wanted normal—that you wanted all of this," he gestured to the pictures. "So he gave you a chance to have it, even though you'd be away from him. He left you alone, gave you a shot at this kind of happiness, and…" he stopped, his voice catching.

Sam stared at him as he turned away, slowly pacing the room, one hand to his face.

"It didn't work out like any of us expected it to, did it?" Sam said finally. "I didn't want to be angry with him. And I didn't want him to die. All I wanted was to be normal, and for him to be proud of that. But I'm not, and he wasn't."

Dean looked back at him. "Yes, he was. You are normal, Sam. To Dad, and to me, you were perfectly normal. Normal kids take family pictures, and have bunnies for playthings, and go swimming in lakes. They smile at cameras and listen to their favorite bands. We weren't ever _Leave__it_ _to_ _Beaver_, maybe, but we were normal. As normal as it seems in that photograph."

"Demons don't take that away, huh?" Sam whispered, fingering the picture.

"Demons can screw with it. They can't destroy it. Because nothing changes the fact that we were—are—a family. Dad never forgot that. Ever. And if you're wanting proof of that…you found it, Sam."

Sam didn't reply, but reached for the Transformer, flipping around one of the plastic arms. Dean watched him for a moment, arms crossed, then sniffed, and bent down to the papers on the floor.

"Well, what about all this? You're right; we really can't haul it around with us. We should probably put it back in that bus locker. At least, then, we can tell someone where it's at, in case…just in case."

"Not the bus locker," said Sam. "We can't just leave it there."

"Well, where, then? Like you said, Bobby and Ellen aren't really options."

Sam stared at him for a moment, raising his eyebrows.

"No," Dean said, catching his expression. "That's too dangerous."

"This stuff has to be kept safe, and there's no safer place, and you know it."

"We're _wanted_, Sam. You can't just waltz in there and hope no one recognizes you."

"People in this town don't sit around studying posters of wanted men," Sam replied.

"Oh no? All I've seen of this place is a beat up convenience store and a roller rink. What else do you think there is to do here?"

"Very funny. No—keeping this stuff protected is more important. Like you said, this is our history. We need to make sure it can be found again."

Dean shuffled a few more papers, a weary smile on his face as he looked over them, then placed them in the box. "Not like anyone other than us would be looking, anyway."

"You don't know that."

Dean threw him doubtful look. "And who exactly do you suppose will come for the Winchester family scrapbooks in five or ten years?"

"I dunno. You can tell your kids about it," Sam said, grabbing another stack of papers and laying them neatly in the box.

"Excuse me?" Dean turned, wide-eyed. "Where did that come from?"

Sam grinned, not meeting his gaze. "You'll have some. The way you carry on during the weekend, I wouldn't be surprised if there were already one or two mullet heads running around right now."

Dean snorted. "Shut _up_."

Sam laughed lightly, staring at the photograph that was still in his hand. As much as he'd like to keep it with him, he knew it belonged somewhere else. To someone else, who'd be able to look at it and appreciate the happy family that lived in it. He placed it inside.

_Goodbye._

He picked up another batch of papers and put them over the photograph, Dean doing the same, until every piece of their past was neatly arranged inside the old legal box.

Dean picked up the lid, moving to place it on top, but Sam stopped him.

"Wait. We forgot one thing."

* * *

Dean tapped his fingers on the wheel of the Impala impatiently, glancing up through the slanted windshield at the sky. It was still gray overhead, but the rain had cleared, and according to the last weather report (which had cut right in the middle of Page's _Stairway to Heaven _riff) travel was once again safe on the Interstate.

He looked towards the small brick building he'd parked across from, glancing nervously at the camera positioned outside the door. Sam had been in there nearly twenty minutes, and he had no idea what was happening, though no police cars had been called.

That was something.

As if reading his mind, Sam's tall, lanky figure emerged from the bank, his head half-disguised with a baseball cap.

"Dude, what took you so long?" Dean asked as he slid into the passenger's side.

His brother pulled the hat off his head, running fingers through his dark brown hair. "You don't just throw stuff in a safety deposit box. There's a process."

"There are also criminal databases. And you're in a few, remember?"

"No one noticed me. They didn't even have wanted posters in there."

Dean frowned, but started the engine. "Did you get one?"

"Yeah," Sam held the key out in front of him. "Number 52."

"Okay, well, that's taken care of. But the question is," Dean asked as they pulled off onto the highway. "What do we do with the key?"

Sam pursed his lips for a moment, thinking. "What if put it in Dad's Journal? No one's going to know about the box without reading that journal first."

"You really think it'll be safe there?"

"It'll be safer there than anywhere else. I mean, we can't exactly tie it around our necks."

"Yeah."

Sam reached around until he found the leather bound book, flipping carefully open to the page where the word "preserve" and the number combination had been scribbled hastily. He wrote "back, box 52", then flipped to the rear of the journal, using a small jackknife to slice a piece of the inner cloth cover away, and slid the key into the hole. It stuck for a moment before sliding slowly down to the bottom of the back flap.

"We can glue it back when we stop somewhere," Sam said, closing the book and laying it in the dash box.

Dean watched him place it in the drawer, slightly troubled. It seemed almost impossible, to protect that one little key and hope that someone would find it and figure out what it meant.

But then again, their father had left them a bus combination in an easily destructible journal, and they'd managed to find it.

Sam slumped down into the passenger's side, exhaling heavily. "So, where to?"

Dean shrugged, noting the old convenience store as it slid by. The highway stretched before him, trailing off into the empty horizon. "I don't know."

"Well…we could just keep driving for a while."

"Sounds good." He flipped on the radio, turning the dial to the first available (and good) song. He caught a Top 40, which belted out a tune by a popular rock band.

Sam looked over at him. "Not that one. I've heard it a hundred times."

"Yeah. Me too." He flipped the station, catching some _Metallica_. "That's better."

"Thanks." Sam grabbed his camera from the backseat, clicking through the album to the last picture he'd taken. "You know, I think I'll keep this on here. Just in case."

Dean shook his head. "I can't believe I let you convince me to take that."

"It's a good picture," Sam flipped the camera's viewfinder towards him. A picture of them smiled back at him.

"I hate how I look in pictures."

"Whatever. It's a good picture."

Dean glanced at it again. Sam was grinning widely at the camera, his long arm looped around Dean's neck. Dean had his arms crossed, smiling as much as he'd felt like, still in the half-damp t-shirt from his run through the rain.

"Tell me again why we took that?"

Sam flipped the viewfinder around, his grin growing as he studied it. "So whoever comes into Preserve with the key to our safe deposit box can know who our family was."

"By looking at that picture of the two of us."

"By seeing we haven't changed all that much."

"Yes, we have."

Sam tilted his shaggy head to the side, gesturing to the radio, where "Enter Sandman" was finishing up. He made a mock strongman pose. "No, we haven't."

Dean lazed a wrist over the wheel, shaking his head at his brother, smiling. "Okay. I get it. Now stop, you're freakin' me out."

His brother grinned, glancing one more time at the picture, then clicked the camera off and slouched further into the seat. Dean watched at the population sign rolled by; despite the classic on the radio, the last few words of the pop rock rang through his head.

_Now leaving the town of Preserve. Pop. 1367._

_Thanks for visiting. Goodbye._

"Goodbye," he hummed quietly. "Goodbye."


End file.
